In a amendment proposed in federal district court, Mooney’s lawyers describe Warren as a key figure in an attempt to frame her for speaking out against then-Chief Matthew Cummings. The request calls for changing Warren’s status as a co-defendant from being named in his official capacity to being named personally.

This request drew a quick repudiation from City Hall, with an opposition filing calling the notion that Warren was part of any conspiracy “laughable.”

Well, this is very interesting. I doubt Mooney after all she has been through would attempt to implicate S.W. unless she firmly believed it was justified.
This entire episode regarding the police chief was not pleasant to learn about.
Perhaps Setti has let the power of his position run a little unchecked. Not the first time I have seen this happen.

I noticed in the TAB that the City has reached a settlement with at least one [of several] plaintiffs in suits resulting from Chief Cummings tenure. Absent from the article, [buried deep within the paper], was any indication of the settlement amount. That figure is a matter of public record, and I hope the TAB will follow up and report what the City settled for, and how much all of this is costing Newton taxpayers.

Mike,
I believe your referring to 1 of the 5 or so sexual harassment cases.
I don’t believe the mayor is personally involved in this, but I do believe he knew about and signed off on the lawsuit against Mooney.

The accompanying story on the Wicked Local site repeats as fact the false charge that Chief Cummings used sexist language on Ms. Mooney. As the tape of the hearings clearly shows, no one in his office ever heard the Chief use such language and even his accuser admits he never used it before or after the two incidents she charged. Even her best friend had the integrity to admit that she didn’t hear the one allegedly said in her presence. The Watertown Police Chief who was present at the time of that incident unequivocally denied that Chief Cummings said any such thing. This makes the claim that the city had to act fast to hire a “competent” investigator. It would be more accurate to say that the city had to act fast to hire a gullible investigator. I would again urge journalists, bloggers, and citizens who want to understand the truth of the matter to visit the Youtube site “Support Newton Police Chief Matthew Cummings ” for the tapes of the hearing before Mr. Rooney,

The charges of conspiracy are in fact laughable. It’s very clear that the police leaders acted expeditiously to collect evidence on the charges and wanted to present it promptly to the appropriate forum. The City Hall officials on the contrary fiddled and diddled until the
accused party could make her false charges against the Chief and her preposterous conspiracy law suits. Her tactics were successful in weakening the case against her.
The conspiracy is only credible if you believe that the Untouchables could or would work together with the Three Stooges to convict an innocent person. The Police leaders wouldn’t do such a thing because of their integrity. The City Hall leaders couldn’t because of their incompetence.

As the whistleblower who put Paul Shanley in prison and drove Bernard Law from Boston,
I have an instinctive sympathy for those who challenge male authority figures, but I know that not everybody who claims such things is telling the truth, and such false charges make me very angry. Such scheming undercuts the credibility of the valid accusations.
As the only female candidate for Mayor this year, I state that Chief Cummings did nothing to deserve removal from office. Those removed him wrongly or helped to do so deserve removal from their offices instead.

@Ms. Sequeira,
Often times in a case of “he said” “she said”, there are no other witnesses available to corroborate one side of a story against another. Therefore, the determination of what is and is not fact comes down to a matter of credibility and in this instance it certainly appears that the fact finders believed Ms. Sweeney to be more credible than the Chief of Police. To evaluate the reasonableness of that decision, it also helps to look at what is and is not disputed. I note that in the investigator’s report, the incident described where the Chief walked up to Ms. Sweeney and kicked her foot with enough force to (a) send her shoe flying; (b) damage her shoe and (c) injure her foot was “largely undisputed”. I also note that in your criticism, you completely ignore that fact and that behavior which was totally inappropriate in any work place and unequivocally boorish behavior. You may disagree but I think that most reasonable employers would agree that assault and battery by one employee upon another is an offense which warrants immediate termination. Indeed, if a student in the Newton Public Schools engaged in this behavior the response would be swift, sure and harsh.

Regarding the assertion that the police leadership wanted to bring the matter forward expeditiously, do you agree then that the police dept. was prevented from bringing charges in criminal court by interference from City Hall? The charges were fairly straight forward and the fact that the charges were not initiated until after Ms. Sweeney engaged counsel and made a formal demand on the City certainly raises the appearance of retaliatory criminal prosecution. Ms. Sweeney’s acquittal by an impartial jury further strengthens the appearance that the criminal proceedings were retribution.

Both Ms Mooney and Chief Cummings were career employees of our City. These court disagreements of why someone was fired (a very complex matter for someone that has been at the job for so long), and whether a police chief abused his power (very subjective based on what I’ve read) does trigger some prejudges inside us drawing conclusions beyond the facts.

There are some basics though. One basic in any business is employment matters are private matters, period. The city has no special obligation to publicize settlements. If they did, the leverage of doing a settlement would be completely taken away and that damage would snowball with every settlement.

The other basic is employers fire privately. No press conferences, no messages to staff or shareholders. Certainly nothing like a City Hall steps photo shoot the day before starting a major political campaign — looky here, I’m a big man in Newton, and I’m in control was the only message in that act. That was a bit more offensive than office horseplay, in my opinion.

@Hoss– I have to take issue with your point about the City’s obligation to release settlement figures. Not only is that what I would expect from an administration committed to transparency, but the settlement numbers are also a matter of public record. The public has a right to know how much each of these lawsuits cost taxpayers. The TAB should have done a little more digging, and that number should have been included in the article.

Mike Striar — You may be right, I may be wrong. If you’re correct, I’m thinking it would be pretty standard press process to get the public record and publish it. I have not seen this happen, have you? Hopefully a lawyer will chime in and cite the law

Lisap, there were in fact multiple witnesses who said that Chief Cummings never used the words “whore” or “bitch” and multiple witnesses including the women themselves who admitted that the accuser and at least one other woman in the Chief’s office used even worse language all the time. The “bitch” accusation was not confirmed by the accuser’s friend and was directly denied by the Watertown Police Chief. Nevertheless the gullible investigator who never recorded his interviews believed the charge as did the other “finder of fact,” the Mayor’s right hand man. The massive conflict of interest on his part is obvious.

The accuser was dangling her shoe off her foot when the Chief kicked the heel of her shoe on a playful whim. This was silly but hardly boorish and without the false language accusations would not have reasonably constituted conduct unbecoming.

I agree that the Mayor’s office and Law Department did delay the prosecution of the case. Their ineptitude gave the chief’s accuser the chance to file her ridiculous conspiracy cases and make her phony charges against the Chief that she’d been planning since the Chief cracked down on her abuse of overtime. Again I urge all interested citizens to view the tapes of the hearings on the Youtube site : ” Support Newton Police Chief Matthew Cummings.” and come to your own conclusions.

Hoss is absolutely right in his description of the spectacle of the City Hall steps firing.
A man who served the city for over 33 years without a blemish on his record was dismissed in a grandiose manner to highlight the Mayor’s announcement of his candidacy

@Ms. Sequeira, With all due respect, I strongly disagree. When a child behaves this way it is silly. When a grown man behaves this way, particularly the person in the highest position of leadership in the police department, it is crude and course and without any justification. When the conduct results in physical harm, as it did here, it cannot be excused as the playful silly prank of a grown man. I understand that you disagree, but I do believe that the former chief is pursuing an appeal of his termination and we must all then await the outcome of further proceedings.

Lisap — I don’t know the person involved. From my 1000 foot level, even if I take the act that you describe as an aggressive act and not office horseplay among two long term comrades, it is but one act in a 30 year period. The appropriate focus s/b did the man expose Newton to litigation by firing someone unjustifiably. We would need to see the full record to determine that.

If there is evidence of rage in this situation, yes it would be appropriate to focus on one act.

@Hoss, I don’t know any of the parties involved either so I too get to watch from a high roost.

I believe that the standard for the former chief’s termination was conduct unbecoming of the office of the Chief of Police. Putting aside the individual’s prior record, and I trust it must have been excellent to have achieved the office, the question then to me is how that behavior reflects upon the office of the highest ranking official in the police department. Personally, I do not want the individual in that office to think that horseplay, silliness, however one may characterize the behavior, is acceptable conduct. Call me a stiff, but as the holder of that office the chief is held to a high standard of conduct and I do not believe he met that standard. I focused upon that incident because it was “largely undisputed” by the chief, but having watched nearly the entire hearing (not simply the version edited in favor of the chief), my credibility determinations do not favor the chief’s version. That’s the way of factual determinations though.

Well, I wish there were such a gold standard Hoss, but I think it’s a pretty meager standard to expect that the individual leading the city’s police not accuse a subordinate of being a “bitch”, looking like a “whore”, not try kicking someone’s shoe off their foot, participate in a made up story about an “I team” investigation, nor make disparaging comments to pregnant employees or ask a subordinate how drunk she was when she got a tatoo. I really don’t thin that’s asking a lot (shrugs).

Lisap, Whatever either of us read on the investigative reports and lawyer filings, a civil business environment lets a man leave his office with dignity. Here is a man of a certain age whose skill-set isn’t easy to sell outside of his field and the Mayor tells the world he’s fired. Nice, huh?

Did you hear the yahoo! conference call several days ago concerning Patch websites where the CEO fired someone during the call with 1000 employees listening? Disgusting abuse of authority. Unacceptable.

I think the change in the Police Department was for the better. I don’t believe that Ms. Mooney is entitled to some massive bailout at the taxpayer’s expense. I do believe that Mayor Warren owes the citizens of Newton a complete and total explanation of the personnel issues of the last several years including the departures of several Department Heads. These include Elections, Building, Purchasing, Human Resources and IT.

Lisap, we must agree to disagree, but I’m curious what version of the hearings you saw. I attended most of the hearing at City Hall and reviewed the videotape. Clearly the YouTube site “Help Support Newton Police Chief Matthew Cummings” backs up the Chief’s version by juxtaposing the charges against him with the responses from the Watertown Police Chief and others contradicting them. Did you see the testimony from the Executive Officer that Ms. Mooney said she compile a list of things to use against the Chief after he told her that her abuses of overtime had to end? This uncontradicted testimony clearly provides a motive for making false charges and overinflating minor incidents like the shoe matter.

To answer Hoss’s question, I did know the two lieutenants in the Chief’s office and to a lesser extent the Chief and the other office staff. I know the former Executive Officer and Internal Affairs Officer to be men of impeccable integrity and great competence. It is a tragedy of the first order that their services have been lost to the citizens of the city as an indirect consequence of this matter. However I received no information on the details of the case from any of these officers who have been very professional and close-mouthed as the case slogged its way through City Hall and the Courts . My opinions on the merits of the case are based on my attendance at most of the Hearing before Mr. Rooney and review of the tape.

Ms. Sequeira,
I too attended most of the hearing and the portion that occurred during my absence I reviewed online. I also carefully reviewed the full investigation report issued by the impartial investigator which I find to be extremely thorough and persuasive. I also note, as did the impartial investigator, that the former chief never expressly denied the Ms. Mooney’s specific allegations to either the impartial investigator or during his termination hearing. Indeed, he offered no testimony in his own defense and we may draw a negative inference from his failure testify (unlike a criminal proceeding where no negative inference is permitted). As a further matter, the Watertown Police Chief’s testimony was entirely inconsistent with his statement to the investigator; first he had absolutely no recollection and then for the hearing he developed a recollection which makes his testimony suspect. I could go on and on but it’s entirely unnecessary as you suggested, we agree to disagree. I would point out to you though that this matter is still the subject of ongoing litigation and as we live by the rule of law, it is not an appropriate platform for a political campaign. Therefore, since you’re a candidate for Mayor I have to ask . . . what else have you got?

Jacqueline, You are a champion of justice who has had a worldwide impact. Your opinion on a mere administrative matter in Newton isn’t in the same ballpark. I wish you well, and very much hope you’ll chime in on Newton matters via the internet blogs more this year and in the future.